It’s Alive!
I had kind of forgotten how exciting it is to finally get a book up and running. My fourth went live on Amazon just two days ago and that’s pretty rewarding. I will write a little more about it later. Right now, I’m focused on the book I helped to format. It’s called How to Create Your Balanced Life and it’s about pretty much what the title says. Kolleen and I had been working on a final copy edit and formatting since Thursday, August 17, 2017, just four days before the eclipse.
I would make changes and send the manuscript to Kolleen. Some of the changes would disappear in transit. She would make changes and send to me and, sure enough, some of the changes would be gone. This is all by email as we’re trying to live our normal lives. Monday, time for the eclipse inched closer and closer and we were so close. Finally I said, “Kolleen, I have to go,” and I took off. (I had some driving to do to get to my spot.)
Post eclipse, (we both got to see it) we finished what we’d started. What’s cool is that Kolleen is publishing her first book and the excitement in her voice kept rising as we got closer and closer. When I sent her the final PDF, her designer hadn’t quite finished with the cover, but the end was so near she just knew she would finally get to send everything that night. Kolleen wanted to have copies for the Nebraska Writer’s Guild booth at the state fair and she had lots of hope she would make it. It’s been a marathon, but I think the publisher got all her materials on Tuesday morning.
As for me, I’ve now got my first copies of The Reluctant Canary Sings, so I will have some for the booth. Yay! I’m not sure getting those first few copies ever gets boring. It certainly hasn’t yet. A person has to kind of “rub around” on them as an old colleague of mine used to say. You’ve got to pick them up and handle them—and then wipe off the fingerprints.
Now, I’m really excited because I already have a couple of reviews and I’m looking forward to taking books to the Indie bookstores here in Nebraska and arranging for a book signing/reading tour. Set in post-Prohibition, Depression-Era Cleveland, Canary follows a young singer through about five years of singing for her supper. For more about The Reluctant Canary Sings, check out earlier installments of my blog for costumes, cars, slang, character profiles, and even an excerpt or two.
Check me out next Friday for something on the eclipse. I got to see it all alone on top of a hill in the Sandhills.
